Life update

I am still around and I did not forget the blog, it’s just that I’ve been a bit busy with other things lately. During the week not much special is happening, it’s just work as usual. Most of the time in München, some of the time in this shithole small town called Rheinbach on the other side of Germany. Which is where I will be next week, actually. I can hardly wait, I am trembling in anticipation. Umm .. no, not really. In any case, not much I can do about that right now so I have to go.

Otherwise we’ve been working on our house, which we nicknamed “The Cave”, don’t ask why. The Cave is starting to look better now. We are also trying to do something about what we call “city rats”. They are not actually rats, just pigeons. We don’t like them, they are all over the roof, they make weird sounds and they shit everywhere. Luckily Freya might’ve found a solution:

Yes, that’s a pump-action water gun with a pretty good range. We hunt them down now and I think they are learning that it’s not so safe anymore to sit anywhere they please.

At the beginning of June I finally have a week of vacation, which should be kinda nice. As it happens, my parents will also be visiting and they will also bring a very special little somebody, which I will very happy to see again. That’s also the reason we have accelerated a bit the renovation inside The Cave. It’s not yet ready to receive too many guests but hopefully we’ll get it ready in time ;-)

Professionally I am still kinda working towards my CCSP, I have two more exams left in which the Cisco ASA firewall plays a major part. That’s one thing I can’t practice with at home so I don’t have many choices. Either classes or I just get whatever books I can for self study and I do the practice online. Which is what I will do actually. Internetwork Expert is a well-known site for the candidates to the CCIE, the Holy Grail of the Cisco certifications. They also have rack rentals and I noticed that the security rack has all the equipment I need to practice for my ASA exam: 2 ASA’s, IPS sensor, ACS server and so on, just perfect.

So I just rented rack slots for one week and at the end of June and I will just stay home and practice. It’s actually not that expensive either, about $15 for a 5.5 hour slot. My boss agreed with the plan, probably the $90 price for one week  plus some books as opposed to many thousands of euros for a 4-day Cisco course plus travel expenses might’ve had something to do with it.

Last but not least, I am still trying to convince Freya to do a guest post on the blog but so far no success. I am still working on it, she has some funny stories to tell from her daily trips to work ;-) I even offered to translate it into romanian but I guess I need to offer more incentive. We’ll see.

Cisco SNRS course

Warning: geeky talk.This is what course “rack” looks like. Each student has his own “pod” (I have no idea why they call it that) which consists of a 2811 router, a 2960 switch and 2 laptops, which simulate a client and a server. The thing is pretty compact as you can see, the trainer only has to plug it into a socket for power then just hand out two network cables to each student.

The course is about securing Cisco devices (routers and switches), VPNs and ACS. I have already worked quite a bit with most of the technologies mentioned in the course so it comes a bit earier for me, I don’t think there will be any problems at the exam. As a “deadline” I have to pass the exam until end of March. I have to pass also the CCNA Security exam until end of March, new prerequisite for the CCSP certification. But I think it’s going to be ok too.

The main reason I came to this course is the lack of books on SNRS. For some weird reason, Cisco hasn’t published any books about the CCSP exams. All you can get is the study guides they hand out in the course, there is not much else. Or at least I could not find anything. If I would’ve found books about this I would’ve stayed home because most of the things in this course can be simulated in GNS3.

Well, back to the class ;-)